First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl is raped and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a center of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and "interrogated," all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been instilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but surely, the continent proceeds toward savagery.

And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific reverse shock: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers around the racks invent, refine, discuss.

Speaking of torturers, let's revisit what Mitt Romney said last May at a Republican presidential debate in South Carolina. He was responding to an imaginary scenario in which terrorists have exploded bombs in three American cities, and are taken to Guantanamo before they can carry out a fourth attack.

First of all, let's make sure... that scenario doesn't ever happen. And the key to that is prevention. We've all spent a lot of time talking about what happens after the bomb goes off. The real question is how do you prevent the bomb from going off.... Now you said the person is going to be at Guantanamo. I'm glad they're at Guantanamo. I don't want them on our soil. I want them on Guantanamo where they don't get the access to lawyers they get when they're on our soil. [...] Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo... and there's no question but that in a setting like that, where you have the ticking bomb, that the President of the United States... has to make the call, and enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used. Not torture, but enhanced interrogation techniques.

Back to Aimé Césaire and his Discourse on Colonialism, which has been called a "third world manifesto." He is talking about what happens once people in "civilized" nations discover that the techniques they have used on others are being turned on them.

People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: "How strange! But never mind — it's Nazism, it will pass!" And they wait, they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples....

Yes, it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the twentieth century that without his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive in Hitler is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa.

Today the U.S. is falling into the same trap. When U.S. soldiers come under fire in Baghdad, they call in air strikes that inevitably cause the deaths of civilians — women and children and even whole families — because they are fighting in a residential neighborhood. We may see a headline that says 49 people were killed in such a confrontation, but we don't even read the article because we don't want to think about it. Girls are raped as Aimé Césaire says, prisoners are tortured, and boastfulness is displayed by our leaders. Yet we in the West are not outraged, because these crimes are not being done to us, they are being done to "the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the blacks of Africa." Instead, journalists wring their hands about how to restore U.S. prestige in the world, or what should be done in Pakistan as if it were our job to write the script.

What has changed in the 50 years since Aimé Césaire wrote his words, besides a few names and dates? We still have the same smug conviction that we can do no wrong, because by accident of birth we live in a privileged nation. We still think we are exempt from our own standards of decency when dealing with the rabble outside our gates. And we are still just as blind to it, and the way it corrodes us.

Copies of the video began to circulate from cell phone to cell phone, until they were posted to the internet by political blogger Mohammed Khaled. With activist bloggers fanning the flames, the uproar over the incident, and numerous other examples of police brutality, continued to grow. A few courageous journalists investigated, Emad's identity was uncovered, and he agreed to go on record to tell his story.

To the surprise of many, the Egyptian justice system was shamed into acting, and Captain Islam Nabih and Corporal Reda Fathi, the officers responsible for the rape, were put on trial. But not before Emad himself was sentenced to three months in prison for "resisting authorities," in other words for having the temerity to speak up. At their trial, the accused officers claimed the rape video was fabricated, but after months of legal maneuvering, on Monday justice was finally done, with Nabih and Fathi sentenced to three years each.

"God is great! Thank God!" shouted el-Kabir. "I regained my right. I don’t want anything more than that."

This is one situation where bloggers have clearly made a difference, because if the video of Emad's rape had not been posted on the internet, in the context of a campaign to expose police brutality, then the incident would never have been uncovered and he would never have found the courage to speak out. On the other hand, this incident is just one among many, and perhaps not even the most egregious, just the most egregious captured on video.

Injustice is still alive and well in Egypt, as is proven by the fact that Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, a blogger who was expelled from Al-Azhar University, disowned by his family, and jailed for expressing his views about religion and the state, is still less than a year into his four-year prison sentence. A website has been set up in solidarity with Kareem that will tell you all you need to know about his case. There is a section featuring the writing that got him in trouble, translated from Arabic, and his letters from prison of which this is the latest:

I announce from here that my accusation is not a shame for me. I have it like a crown on my head and necklace on my chest. Everyone must know that I did not force myself to respect any tyrant law that hinders freedoms. I am against any act to limit the right of freedom of expression of any person. Laws were created to regulate the relationships between individuals inside the same society. They are not meant to limit their freedoms and violate their basic rights. [...]

Let everyone, including the tyrant judges who sentenced me and those who misused my crisis to get me, know that prison will not work out with me. [...] Only stupid, weak, and inflexible people use these methods to justify their violent actions by breaking the pencils of writers and silencing their voices. They cannot achieve what they want.

There is a page where you can leave comments of support for Kareem, and the same page includes instructions for writing him in prison. The keepers of the website encourage us to do that, both to boost Kareem's morale and to let the Egyptian authorities know "we are still watching."

To understand how U.S. policy encourages repression in Egypt, check out this recent article by former New York Times journalist Chris Hedges, "Outsourcing Torture."

Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 26 years...can torture and “disappear” dissidents — such as the Egyptian journalist Reda Hilal, who vanished four years ago — without American censure because he does the dirty work for us on those we "disappear." The extraordinary-rendition program, which sees the United States kidnap and detain terrorist suspects in secret prisons around the world, fits neatly with the Egyptian regime’s contempt for due process. Those rounded up by American or Egyptian security agents are never granted legal rights. The abductors are often hooded or masked. [...] When these suspects arrive in Cairo they vanish into black holes as swiftly as dissident Egyptians. It is the same dirty and seamless process.

We have nothing to say to Mubarak. He is us. [...] The more savage the torture techniques of the Mubarak regime the faster the prisoners we smuggle into Egypt from Afghanistan and Iraq are broken down. The screams of Egyptians, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghans mingle in these prison cells to condemn us all.

Cross-posted on eatbees blog.]]> tag:www.talkingpointsmemo.com,2007:/talk/blogs//19.235851 2007-10-30T07:54:59Z 2008-10-13T01:23:00Z

In January 2007, when President Bush announced the "surge" in Iraq, he went out of his way to put Iran on notice. The following month, I wrote a post called "Collision Course" which laid out, as succinctly as possible, the state of play at the time. I wrote, "It is well known that Dick Cheney, who runs things in the White House, is chomping at the bit to attack Iran...." Following this, I wrote no less than six posts titled "Iran Fever" (the link is to the last in the series) that chronicled the emerging conflict from every possible angle. After that, things seemed to calm down for a while. We heard that Condoleezza Rice had gained the upper hand.

That period of calm seems to be over now. Fox News is beating the war drums like they did for Iraq. Neocons like Joe Lieberman, Bill Kristol and John Bolton are calling for an attack, and the latest rumors say that Cheney is poised to get his way. Only there is a new twist. The reason being given for attacking Iran is no longer their nuclear program, but the support they are supposedly giving to Shia militias who attack U.S. troops. A series of articles by Michael Gordon of the New York Times has helped make the case. (He also worked with Judith Miller to promote bogus claims of WMD before the Iraq invasion.) Two weeks ago, the Bush administration announced that it would label Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps a "terrorist" group, the first time such a label has been given to a national army.

In an August 23 article on AlterNet, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern uses his professional bag of tricks to try to guess what Bush adminstration officials are thinking about Iran. McGovern is best known for publicly confronting Donald Rumsfeld over lies that he knew where WMD was hidden in Iraq. Based on media activity, insider rumor and political maneuvering, he concludes that the liklihood of an attack on Iran is now dangerously high.

One former colleague, operations officer-par-excellence Robert Baer, now reports... that, according to his sources, the Bush/Cheney administration is winding up for a strike on Iran; that the administration's plan to put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list points in the direction of such a strike; and that the delusional "neoconservative" thinking that still guides White House policy concludes that such an attack would lead to the fall of the clerics and the rise of a more friendly Iran.

Even scarier, he suggests that the resignation of Karl Rove may be a sign that moderates in the White House have lost the battle on Iran.

In the past Karl Rove has served as a counterweight to Vice President Dick Cheney, and may have tried to put the brakes on Cheney's death wish to expand the Middle East quagmire to Iran. And former Pentagon officer, retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked shoulder to shoulder with some of the most devoted neocons just before the attack on Iraq, has put into words...speculation several of us have been indulging in with respect to Rove's departure.

In short, it seems possible that Rove, who is no one's dummy and would not want to be required to "spin" an unnecessary war on Iran, may have lost the battle with Cheney over the merits of a military strike on Iran, and only then decided — or was urged — to spend more time with his family.

He goes on to address the widespread belief that Bush is too politically weak, and it is too late in his term for an attack on Iran.

Many Americans may still cling to the belief that attacking Iran won't happen because it would be crazy and that Bush is a lame-duck president who wouldn't dare undertake yet another reckless adventure when the last one went so badly. But rationality and common sense have not exactly been the strong suit of this administration. Bush has placed himself in a neoconservative bubble that operates with its own false sense of reality.

He refers us to an article by Dr. Justin Frank, a psychiatrist with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, called "Dangers of a Cornered George Bush." The picture painted by Dr. Frank isn't pretty, particularly when we consider that the man he is describing controls the most powerful military in human history.

George W. Bush is without conscience.... By identifying himself as all good and on the side of right, he has been able to vanquish any guilt, any sense of doing wrong. [...]

George W. Bush seems also to be without shame. [...] He says whatever he thinks people want to hear, whether it be "stay the course" or "I've never been about 'stay the course.' " He does whatever he wants.

He lies — not just to us, but to himself as well. What makes lying so easy for Bush is his contempt — for language, for law, and for anybody who dares question him. [...]

Despite having no shame, Bush has a profound fear of failure and humiliation. He defends himself from this by any means at his disposal.... He will flinch only if directly confronted about being a failure or a liar. [...]

What a burden to have to face his many inadequacies — now held up to the light of day — whether it is his difficulty in speaking, thinking, reading, managing anxiety, or making good decisions. He will not change, because for him change means humiliating collapse.

We mustn't expect Bush to suddenly turn pragmatic or accept common sense. His response to failure is to dig in, give us the finger, and repeat his mistakes in a more magnified way. Cheney, who has manipulated him brilliantly until now, understands this, and he knows how to use it to get what he wants, such as an attack on Iran.

In an August 24 report in Raw Story, Larisa Alexandrovna gives us a complimentary piece of the puzzle.

The Bush administration has shifted from its earlier strategy of building a case [against Iran] based on an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program to one invoking improvised explosive devices...that are killing US soldiers in Iraq. [...]

A senior intelligence official told Raw Story...that the CIA had stepped up operations in the region, shifting their Iran focus to "other" approaches in preference to the "black propaganda" that Raw Story "has already reported on." [...] One former CIA case officer who served in the Middle East even suggested that politically framing the Iranians for its own failures in Iraq would allow the Bush administration to avoid accountability, as well as providing a casus belli for an attack. [...]

"If you were to report that a U.S. surgical strike against key targets in Iran were to happen sooner rather than later, you would not be wrong," said [another] source.... Some officials speculate that the administration is trying to provoke the Iranians into an incident that will justify an airstrike in response, suggesting that the combined effect of circumstantial evidence tying Iran to the IEDs and an event or incident involving the Iranian Revolutionary Guard might "just be enough" to justify military action against Iran.

She goes on to put Cheney right in the middle of the action.

None of the sources interviewed for this article referenced President George W. Bush or alluded to the end of the Bush presidency as the deadline for an Iranian offensive. Each, instead, mentioned either the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney or Cheney himself. [...]

One of the former CIA case officers interviewed for this article explained that the Office of the Vice President is making this drastic move in order to lay the groundwork for a possible incident.

"They still need a trigger and I would not be surprised if we will see some event in Iraq which implicates the Iranians," said this source. "They need a pretext."

Putting all this together, we see a humiliated president who becomes more dangerous when cornered, under the influence of a psychotically authoritarian vice president, whose fixation since at least 2003 has been attacking Iran. We see preparations in the U.S. media and in the Middle East for such an attack.

I hope my fears will be proven wrong, both for the sake of the Iranian people, and because an attack on Iran during a presidential campaign would seriously distort our politics. Yet how it can be stopped if Congress remains weak, and the media refuse to do their job? There have been rumors that if an attack order is given, some of our top generals will resign rather than obey. But the responsibility for dealing with an out-of-control executive lies with Congress. In a democracy, we should never have to rely on disobedient commanders to do what's right!

Cross-posted on my home site, eatbees blog, as the last post in a series about neoconservative evil. The first three were "Neoconservative Death Throes," "Heart of Darkness" and "What Hath Cheney Wrought, Part I."

With intelligence officials in Washington increasingly alarmed about the prospect of another major attack on the U.S. homeland, and public support for the Bush administration's anti-terror efforts reclaiming lost ground, we need more Dick Cheney.

Hayes likes the fact that Cheney "has not moved on" since September 11, 2001. He praises Cheney for giving us the illegal wiretapping that Congress just voted to make legal even though it violates the Fourth Amendment, and the "controversial...procedures put in place to extract information from hardcore terrorists," also known as torture, that are detailed in a recent article by Jane Meyer. Based on this track record, he urges Cheney to "play a more public role" defending issues he "understands...as well as anyone in the Bush Administration." He closes with a few words from Cheney himself.

This is a struggle that's going to go on in that part of the world for decades. ... We just have to have people understand that and understand that the alternative is not peace.

Meanwhile, controversy has erupted over an editorial published by a neoconservative group with close ties to senior Bush Administration officials. In "Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy," Family Security Matters contributor Philip Atkinson calls on Bush, among other things, to "slaughter" Iraqis with nuclear weapons, "empty Iraq of Arabs" and replace them with Americans, and proclaim himself President-for-Life, not just of America but of the entire world. Understandably, the article has since disappeared from the FSM website, but it has been cached by Google and copied in its entirety here. I'll offer you a small taste.

The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead.

The simple truth [is] that modern weapons now mean a nation must practice genocide or commit suicide.

By elevating popular fancy over truth, Democracy is clearly an enemy of not just truth, but duty and justice, which makes it the worst form of government.

If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results....

President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming "ex-president" Bush or he can become "President-for-Life" Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

In case anyone is wondering if this is some sort of parody, a glance at the FSM advisory board shows they are neoconservative luminaries. If there is any parody here, it is unintentional self-parody. Meanwhile, the blogger Gonzo Muckraker got in touch with Philip Atkinson by e-mail, and their exchange demostrates all too well that the author's delusions are sincere. When GM first writes Atkinson, he replies:

The article...was aimed at finding a defence against the awful threat of anonymous nuclear attacks upon the USA. A solution must be found to this catastrophic probability if humanity is not to be plunged into a dreadful dark age, and if that solution is to slaughter whole nations, then it must be better than allowing the destruction of humanity.

Paradoxical, yes? A second exchange results in Atkinson, advocate of genocide, accusing GM of being a "madman" and a "beast."

What separates humanity from beasts is the ability to recognise right from wrong independently of our feelings: by use of a moral code. You tell me what moral code you use to understand right from wrong or stand condemned as just another madman.

But isn't Atkinson a right-wing nutcase who represents no one but himself? To the contrary, he is listed as "FSM Contributing Editor" on the original version of the article. Links are given to seven other articles he has written for FSM, and his personal biography. However, since the controversy has erupted, all trace of him has disappeared from the FSM website. Such a rapid and complete scrubbing looks like the work of someone with a guilty conscience, does it not?

According to Media Matters, FSM is a "front group" for the Center for Security Policy, a well-connected neoconservative think tank founded by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. When you call the phone number listed on the FSM website, it rings at CSP headquarters. And the CSP's advisory board is even more impressive than FSM's. SourceWatch lists some 25 current and former senior government officials with ties to the CSP, including Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Robert Joseph, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

So do you want "more Dick Cheney"? How about an editorial calling for the nuking of Iraq and the installation of George W. Bush as global dictator "to save humanity"? Such an editorial was published, then retracted by an organization that is a nerve center and mouthpiece of Bush Administration policy. Its author, Philip Atkinson, may be far enough from power to be pushed aside when association with him becomes embarassing. But I can't help thinking he represents the core of the neoconservative agenda — its paranoia, its hubris, its true face.

Cross-posted on eatbees blog.

I guess we can’t expect a presidential candidate to turn down an invitation to speak at AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby that helped give us the Iraq war, and now wants a war with Iran. But when Obama spoke there, did he really have to pander as blatantly as this?

I think “a small gathering of friends” fits this crowd just right. I want to begin today by telling you a story. Back in January of 2006, I made my first trip to the Holy Land. […] Our helicopter landed in the town of Kiryat Shmona on the border. What struck me first about the village was how familiar it looked. The houses and streets looked like ones you might find in a suburb in America. I could imagine young children riding their bikes down the streets. I could imagine the sounds of their joyful play just like my own daughters. There were cars in the driveway. The shrubs were trimmed.

As it happens, Kiryat Shmona was hit repeatedly by missiles during last summer’s war between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defense Forces. I’m no supporter of Hezbollah missles, which were surely launched with the knowledge that they would kill civilians. But a far greater number of Lebanese civilians died in that war. This was rationalized by moral opportunists like Alan Dershowitz, who argued in the Los Angeles Times that some civilian deaths are “more tragic than others.” Apparently, Lebanese civilians deserve to die more than Israeli civilians do, because they might be harboring terrorists. Besides, Obama might add, their homes don’t “look like ones you might find in a suburb in America.” There are no cars in the driveways. The shrubs are untrimmed. Given the history of American prejudice, Obama should know better than to argue that we must stand with Israel simply because they “look like” us.

Obama opposed the war in Iraq before it began, but today he offers little hope for a resolution, calling not for full withdrawal of American forces (of the presidential candidates, only Bill Richardson and Ron Paul have done this) but for a “phased redeployment” of “combat forces” that will allow “a limited number of U.S. troops to remain and prevent Iraq from becoming a haven for international terrorism,” thus ensuring that Iraq will remain under American tutelage for the forseeable future. Indeed, the American footprint in the region might even expand. As he told AIPAC, “We will redeploy our troops to other locations in the region, reassuring our allies that we will stay engaged in the Middle East.”

In many ways, Obama’s view of the Middle East is no more enlightened than that of our current president. Hezbollah is said to have “attacked Israel” instead of the other way around, although Seymour Hersh has shown that Israel planned the confrontation well in advance with help from the Bush adminstration. Iran is called “one of the greatest threats to the United States, Israel, and world peace,” as if world peace were identical with U.S. and Israeli interests. President Ahmadinejad is said to have called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” a mistranslation that has become one of the cliches of Middle East reporting. More accurately, he expressed the hope that Zionism would one day “vanish from the page of time” as the Soviet Union has. Obama goes on to say:

In the 21st century, it is unacceptable that a member state of the United Nations would openly call for the elimination of another member state. But that is exactly what he has done. Neither Israel nor the United States has the luxury of dismissing these outrages as mere rhetoric.

So for Ahmadinejad to imagine a future in which Israel is gone from the scene, as Reagan did to the Soviet Union when he tossed it on the “ash heap of history,” is an “outrage” that cannot be “dismissed.” In fact the outrage is so great that the U.S. is justified in responding with force. Like every other American politican, Obama insists that “we should take no option, including military action, off the table.” He compounds this double standard by imagining a future in which Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are provoked by Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons to launch their own nuclear programs. This hypothetical crisis, still years away if it happens at all, ignores the fact that the Middle East already has a nuclear state. But Obama has no problem with that. Israel’s suburbs look like ours.

America’s love affair with Israel is complicated, and I can understand why Barack Obama in particular, as the first serious African-American presidential candidate, would feel the need to prove his credentials to the Jewish community. Black leaders have been accused in the past (with varying degrees of justification) of anti-Jewish sentiment, as when Jesse Jackson’s “Hymietown” remark helped sink his 1984 presidential bid. One of the great black leaders of his generation, Andrew Young, was appointed ambassador to the U.N. by Jimmy Carter, only to be fired for talking to the PLO at a time when it was still considered a terrorist group. Given this history, Obama may feel that he has no choice but to set minds at ease with an early statement of support for Israel. But does he have to do it in such a pandering way? For once I would like to hear an American politician say, “Israel has a right to defend itself, but self-defense doesn’t mean bombing a family who are asleep in their homes.”

Moving on from the Middle East, there is the larger question of how Obama sees our role in the world. In a major foreign policy speech in Chicago, he lays out his vision, which seems designed to reassure those who want to believe that America is still “leader of free world” and “the last, best hope of Earth.” “Best hope” is bad enough, but “last, best hope”? What right do we have to proclaim ourselves the “last” hope of humanity, as if no culture will ever come along to improve on ours? This kind of exceptionalism, this sense of privilege in being an American (no doubt offered, in Obama’s case, with the best of intentions) is what has led us into countless misadventures, and blinded us to our responsibility for the deaths of millions, from Hiroshima to Vietnam to Iraq.

Obama’s rhetoric is marred by the naive and dangerous equations “America = hope” and “America’s interests = human interests.” I give him credit for being more aware of what is going on in the world than most presidential candidates, but his vision for America is a megalomaniac one. He sees a borderless world with America as the leader. Isn’t that another name for empire?

Whether it’s global terrorism or pandemic disease…the threats we face at the dawn of the 21st century can no longer be contained by borders and boundaries. […] We must lead by building a 21st century military to ensure the security of our people and advance the security of all people. […] And America must lead by reaching out to all those living disconnected lives of despair in the world’s forgotten corners…who want our beacon of hope to shine its light their way.

Someone should remind him that a beacon only shines in one direction. I wish the U.S. would try listening for a change. We’ve had a century to lead the world. Haven’t we done enough? In fairness, though, towards the end of his speech, Obama slips into a more progressive groove. After making the requisite nod to “using force — unilaterally if necessary — to protect ourselves,” he switches gears, calling on us to “ensure that those who live in fear and want today can live with dignity and opportunity tomorrow.” I want to believe this is the real Obama, but how do I know?

The true desire of all mankind is not only to live free lives, but lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and simple justice. Delivering on these universal aspirations…requires a society that is supported by the pillars of a sustainable democracy — a strong legislature, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, a free press, and an honest police force. It requires building the capacity of the world’s weakest states and providing them what they need to reduce poverty, build healthy and educated communities, develop markets, and generate wealth.

The corruption I heard about while visiting parts of Africa has been around for decades, but the hunger to eliminate such corruption is a growing and powerful force…. We must couple our aid with an insistent call for reform. We must do so not in the spirit of a patron, but the spirit of a partner — a partner that is mindful of its own imperfections. Extending an outstretched hand…must ultimately be more than just a matter of expedience or even charity. It must be about recognizing the inherent equality and worth of all people.

On a symbolic level, I feel that Obama is the right face for America to show the world in these troubled times. The election of a president whose father was a student from Kenya will be a powerful statement of the values we claim to uphold. Bill Clinton is still popular in places like Morocco because he treated the people there like his own constituents, no doubt giving their leaders a few lessons in democracy in the process. I sense that Obama will be like that. But will he orchestrate a change in policy, or simply give the empire a new face?

At a minimum, whoever is running America needs to be on guard against the sense of entitlement that goes with leadership of the most powerful nation in history. I was in Morocco during the 2004 election season, and watched John Kerry's convention speech with my Moroccan friends. I was struck by the irony of choosing the "leader of the free world" through a vote of just five percent of the world’s population. If Obama could appreciate this irony and begin to educate the American people about it, I might be able to support him as enthusiastically as I would like.

Cross-posted in longer form on eatbees blog.

Al-Houssani studied chemistry in Spain during the 1990s, and dropped out just weeks before finishing his degree. His research paper on "the anti-cancer properties of certain chemical compounds" was published in a professional journal. According to his advisor Francisco F. Perez:

He was very interested in social justice. He said his country was governed by tyrants.... He never said anything bad about Western countries. Quite the opposite. He envied our political regime here and said he wanted our political regime and democracy to be installed in Morocco.

This strikes me as reasonable. After all, in Morocco the 1990s were the years of Driss Basri, the feared enforcer of the late king Hassan II. From there, al-Houssani got radicalized. During his interrogation by Moroccan police, he explained how a Tunisian friend exposed him to militant Islam.

Our principal subjects of discussion were around the jihad. He made me understand the importance of religion and faith, providing me with religious books and audiotapes of the great sheikhs' speeches.

As a result of these influences al-Houssani taught himself to make bombs, then went to Afghanistan where he met top al-Qaeda leaders. He stayed there until the U.S. invasion in 2001. After his return to Morocco, he is believed to have been one of the masterminds of both the Casablanca bombings of 2003, and the Madrid bombings of 2004. Thanks in part to "the great sheikhs' speeches," a chemistry student with a passion for social justice was transformed into a mass murderer.

I would love to believe that the conditions that made this possible were unique to the 1990s, and are no longer valid. But I fear the opposite. The events of the Bush era are giving new jihadis plenty of reasons for resentment, and the war in Iraq is giving them training. It shouldn't surprise us to read more stories like al-Houssani's in ten years' time.

Cross-posted to eatbees blog.

I replied that I know the Iranian people are curious about the world around them, and that people everywhere are different from their stereotypes in the media. I went on to make a psychological observation. "In a crowd it is usually the bullies and extremists who speak first, intimidating the others who are afraid they are in the minority, when in fact the opposite is true. The majority is much more tolerant than the loudmouths who speak. It can take a long time for the tolerant majority to realize that the bullies and extremists do not, in fact, speak for the crowd."

My friend replied, "A friend, with a very sad outcome in his life, told me once, 'One of "them" is enough for a hundred of "us."' There is a handful of loud and extremist people who are more visible that a much larger number of 'normal' people. With their intimidating manners or mere brutality, one of them is able to rule over a hundred of us."

This led me to share with him the following thoughts.

— • —

This is why "rule of law" is so important, to contain the bullies. It's easy for them to get into positions of authority and become tyrants, because that is their nature. So the most important thing in a system of government is transparency and the balance of powers. For example, the police must answer to a civil, elected authority. There must be a process for removing corrupt officials, and so on. No power should be outside the law, or above the rest.

Of course, even then the people must be vigilant, because there is always the possibility of private interests getting together in secret, and using the machinery of government to operate in the dark areas of the law. A friend of mine in Morocco once told me that "all governments are Mafias" and I see his point. In a place like Tunisia or Egypt it is clear, the Mafia is the police. But even in the wealthy democracies, there are private interests that have suceeded in making themselves one with the State, carefully hiding themselves.

I'm an anarchist at heart, so I used to think that the answer was to do away with all government. But then I realized that "rule of law" is the only thing protecting us from a Mafia state. Whatever its imperfections, the constitutional system should not be discarded, but strengthened — by exposing its contradictions and reforming it, by making it more transparent, by increasing citizen control — all on the principle that no one is above the law. Those who resist tyranny should do so in the name of the law!

Here's where I'm stuck. The principle of civil disobedience, as taught by Thoreau, Ghandi and King, tells us that we have the duty to resist unjust laws. We do this is in the name of a higher law, an ideal law that doesn't exist on earth. Each time the law reforms itself, it tries to get closer to this ideal. But where does the ideal come from? I can't accept that it comes from some holy book, for the simple reason that the universe is not frozen in time. We, God's creatures, are expressing God's revelation in new forms each day. This is my answer to the fundamentalists. Universal law comes from us. It represents the spirit of humanity, our image of what we should be. Yet because the law is evolving, there is no fixed point of reference. The laws of two centuries ago aren't the laws of today. We notice their limits and we push against them. We see a hole in the law and we sew it up. Since the law is always changing, by what standard do we accuse a tyrant of injustice? He will answer, "My people aren't ready. They know only the stick. First let them prove their discipline, then we will see about your ideal laws."

Cross-posted on eatbees blog.